Silver Palace developer interviews at gamescom 2026

Two outlets left gamescom 2026 with the Silver Palace team on record, and between them they close more open questions than any official post has this year. Fragster, a German site, sat down with a publishing team spokesperson after playing the show build. Inven, a Korean site, spoke to a development team representative on the floor at Koelnmesse. Neither interview has had much reach in English, and the second one has had almost none.

The headline answers: no generative AI in development, a gacha system that is genuinely still being decided, a parry window that is loose on purpose, and a final test being prepared to run before the end of this year.

What the publishing team told Fragster

Fragster's interview ran on August 31. Yomi played the show build the day before and then spoke to Lucis of the Silver Palace publishing team. It is the more useful of the two because it is a transcript rather than a write-up, so you can see which questions got a real answer and which got a polite deflection.

One caveat on everything below. The interview is in German and the quotes here are translated, so read them as accurate in substance rather than word for word.

Lucis named three core concepts: detective exploration, storytelling inside an urban open world, and combat. The stated intent is to connect them so that you follow a detective through cases, rather than switching between an exploration game and a fighting game. Asked whether story really carries that much weight, the answer was short. "Yes, definitely. We put a great deal of effort into developing a detective story like this."

No generative AI, asked twice

Yomi asked whether generative AI is used anywhere in the development process. "No." Asked again, "not at all?", the answer did not move. "No."

Lucis came back to it unprompted at the end of the interview. A lot of the content in the game is made by "very creative and enthusiastic artists", that is part of why players like Silver Palace, and the studio intends to keep working that way.

That is the first time anyone at Elementa has answered the question in public, and it is a flat no rather than a carefully worded one. It is also the most checkable claim in either interview. A studio that says this and then ships a banner with a six-fingered hand has a far worse week than one that never said it.

The gacha is still not decided

The monetisation answer is the one worth reading closely, because of what it does not say.

Lucis confirmed the system was shown during the Dichotomy beta, that it drew a lot of feedback, and that the feedback from Western communities in particular will be worked into coming versions with "adjustments and optimisations". Then Yomi put numbers on the table: a monthly pass at 10 to 15 euros, and constellation-style systems where pulling a character six or seven times to reach its strongest version can cost between 2,000 and 7,000 euros depending on luck. How would Silver Palace handle that?

"The system is still in development." More information would come in a later test version, or possibly at launch.

So no commitment either way, which is not a surprise, but it does confirm the shape of things. The numbers were not disputed as a description of the genre, and nothing was ruled out. What the site can say is unchanged from what it already says on the worth playing guide: the monetisation has never actually been switched on, nobody has spent money in this game yet, and anyone quoting you a pity count or a pass price for launch is guessing. The gacha system guide covers what the beta build actually displayed.

The parry window is loose on purpose

Yomi noticed that the parry behaves more like a block that also parries, and that pressing clearly too early still works, and asked whether that was intentional or just an early build.

Intentional. Lucis said the team wants Silver Palace to reach the broadest audience it can, that a strict parry is hard for players who do not play action games regularly or who come from anime titles, and that the goal is an experience that feels impressive and satisfying while staying accessible. "So there is a certain tolerance in the reaction time window."

Yomi's counter-suggestion, that precise reactions could be rewarded separately for players who want the harder version, was noted rather than answered.

This lines up with what the build already does. The combat guide covers Casual Mode, where mashing the attack button produces working combos with no timing requirement, and this is the same design instinct applied to the defensive half. Whether the game keeps a high ceiling underneath the forgiving floor is still the open question, and Lucis did not close it.

Detail over square kilometres

Asked whether the priority is a bigger world or a denser one, Lucis picked the second without hedging. The team is putting more effort into making the city feel alive and believable, with more characters you can interact with and more individual details to find. The reasoning is that an urban open world works when you feel you actually live in the city, meeting different people and running into different small stories. "It is not simply about making the city bigger and bigger."

That is a real answer to a question players ask about every open world, and it is the more defensible position for a case-driven game. A murder investigation needs interiors, witnesses and props. It does not need another twenty square kilometres of hillside. The exploration guide and the new districts breakdown cover how much of Silvernia opened up in the last test.

Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and the Victorian setting

On where the detective setting comes from, Lucis pointed at the Victorian era as the moment when science and mythology were being bolted together, and named two direct influences: Sherlock Holmes and the works of Agatha Christie.

Holmes is well documented in the game already, from Red Rose's links to Irene Adler to a Mind Palace whose flavour text paraphrases Conan Doyle almost directly. The character name origins piece traces those.

Christie is the new name. Nothing published about Silver Palace, official or otherwise, has pointed at her before, and it suggests a different structural influence from the Holmes one: the closed circle of suspects, the drawing-room accusation, the cast where everyone has a motive. If you have been wondering why the interrogation system puts a fixed set of people in front of you and asks you to pick, that is the tradition it belongs to. The lore hub collects what is known about the cases.

Forty hours, eight to ten of them story

Asked how big the launch version will be, Lucis had no exact figure, but gave a breakdown that has not been published before. The Dichotomy beta held roughly 40 hours of playable content, of which the main story was 8 to 10 hours. The launch version will hold "significantly more".

That 40-hour number is already on this site in several places, sourced from Elementa. The split is new, and it is the more informative half: a fifth of that build was the case you actually came for, and the rest was the city around it.

On roster size, the current version has "more than a dozen" characters, and the next one will probably have more. Fifteen were playable in Dichotomy, so that is a floor rather than a reveal.

One correction worth making, because the widely shared summary of this interview gets it wrong. Lucis did not say cosmetics are off the table. The question was about equipment menus and signature weapons, and the answer was that a comparable system exists, that you cannot change a character's outfit, and that there are ability and development customisation options per character. That is a statement about what the current build does, not a monetisation commitment either way.

What the team told Inven

Inven's piece ran on August 28, reported by Lee Doo-hyun from the show floor on the 27th. It is a report rather than a transcript, and the representative is unnamed, so it is thinner on system detail and much better on strategy.

Silver Palace was nominated for Best Mobile Game at the gamescom Awards 2026 on its first appearance at the show, while still unreleased. The representative called that a form of recognition in itself, and Inven made the sharper point: the other four nominees are being judged on what they have done since launch, and Silver Palace is standing in that line on trailers and a demo build.

Asked to account for the Western reception, the representative gave a one-word answer: art. Visuals with a distinct identity, from the subject matter up, are described as the base that everything else rests on. Given that the game was nominated on footage alone, that is hard to argue with.

A few other things came out of it. The gun combat in the show build was reworked from the version in the previous test, and the better response to it is read internally as proof the change worked. Reactions differ by region in a way the team tracks: gamescom mixes players, press and industry, evaluates coldly and professionally, while a genre-specific Asian event like Bilibili World is warmer and more direct. Global pre-registrations passed 10 million in August. Elementa opened a Korean subsidiary in August 2025 and plans more marketing and more Korean expo appearances.

The booth itself was built European on purpose, because the setting is European. It carried a central stage, a hands-on zone, a photo zone and a goods counter, plus the pumpkin carriage from the Cinderella boss fight, with band sets, dance performances and a cosplayer runway four times a day. This site covered the booth and its schedule before the show opened.

The final test is being prepared for this year

The scheduling line is the most consequential thing in either interview. The representative would not give a release date, but said the team is preparing to run the final test within this year. Inven drew the obvious conclusion, and it is the right one: if that is the final test, launch narrows to after it.

Two things follow. First, this is the first timing signal of any kind for the next test, which Elementa confirmed exists but has never dated. The estimate on the beta guide works forward from the gap between the first two tests and lands around February 2027, and it is labelled as arithmetic on a single prior cycle for exactly this reason. A first-party statement beats a projection, and this one pulls the test months earlier.

Second, it makes the storefront date look less strange. The App Store listing carries an expected release date of January 31, 2027, which the release date page treats as an Apple pre-order placeholder rather than an announced day. A final test in late 2026 followed by a launch in early 2027 is a coherent sequence. That does not make January 31 the launch date. It does mean the store date and the test schedule stopped contradicting each other.

What is still not known, and still worth refusing to guess at: the test's name, its dates, which platforms it runs on, and whether new applicants can sign up. Elementa has announced none of those.

Sources

• Fragster, Silver Palace im Interview: So soll die Detektiv-Open-World des Anime-RPGs funktionieren, August 31, 2026. Interview by Yomi, article by Jonas Teichmann.
• Inven, Silver Palace dev team: preparing the final test within the year, August 28, 2026, by Lee Doo-hyun.

Quotations from both are translated from the German and Korean originals.

FAQ

Does Silver Palace use AI art?

No. Asked directly at gamescom 2026 whether generative AI is used in development, Lucis of the publishing team answered no, and answered no again when pressed. The follow-up comment credited the game's content to human artists and said the studio intends to keep that approach.

When is Silver Palace's next beta test?

Elementa's team told Inven at gamescom 2026 that it is preparing to run the final test before the end of 2026, with launch following it. No name, dates, platform list or recruitment method has been announced, and nothing has been confirmed about whether new applicants can apply.

Will Silver Palace have skins or costumes?

Nothing has been announced. The publishing team said at gamescom 2026 that you cannot change a character's outfit in the current build, and that character customisation runs through abilities and development options instead. That describes the build as it stands rather than ruling out cosmetics at launch.

How long is Silver Palace?

The Dichotomy beta build held roughly 40 hours of playable content, of which the main story was 8 to 10 hours. The publishing team said the launch version will hold significantly more, but gave no figure.

How much will Silver Palace's gacha cost?

Unknown, and the team said so directly at gamescom 2026. The monetisation system is still in development, feedback from the Dichotomy beta is being worked in, and details will come at a later test or at launch. Neither beta had monetisation switched on, so no real prices exist yet.